Are We In a Tight Spot Yet? New Routing on the Diamond.

The East Face of Long's Peak is the highest and hardest free climbing arena in the world. Nothing comes easily.

The post Are We In a Tight Spot Yet? New Routing on the Diamond. appeared first on Climbing.

Gambler’s Fallacy

Nervous barely describes how on edge I feel. 

I hang from an anchor more than halfway up the Diamond, the 900-foot-high panel of granite that crowns the vertiginous East Face of Longs Peak (14,259 feet), Colorado. It’s August 9, 2020, on my redpoint attempt of the nine-pitch 5.13 that Bruce Miller and I have worked for the past four summers. Above me loom the hardest pitches: a short, bolted 5.13b face (the “Sport Pitch”), an overhanging 5.12 crack, the technical “Roof Pitch” (5.13a), and the final, razor-thin 5.12d face and seam. I look up at the Sport Pitch’s overhanging face ripped with fingertip edges and miniature corners. After you clip four bolts, the pitch finishes on Table Ledge, a horizontal band splitting the upper two-thirds of the wall that, here, is a mere six inches wide.

Below, Bruce jugs the Winter Wall Dihedral, the Diamond’s most conspicuous feature from the north. And though it’s one of our route’s easier pitches, at 5.11d, my forearms swelled with a flash pump and my fingers and toes went numb on the lead. At 13,000-plus feet, the cold is ever-present, especially once the wall drops into late-morning shadow. Coupled with the five-mile, 4,000-foot-gain approach, vicious storms that blindside you, the short season, spots of loose rock, and seeping, sometimes ice-choked cracks, every day up here feels adventurous. Which is precisely what draws people to the Diamond—and Longs Peak—in the first place.

With its broad, distinctly flat summit, Longs dominates the view from the plains east of Colorado’s Front Range. The peak is attempted by more than 15,000 people annually (and summited by about half that), nearly all of whom hike up the circuitous Keyhole Route. Ever since its first ascent more than 60 years ago, the Diamond has been North America’s premier alpine-rock crucible. Routes like The Honeymoon Is Over (5.13c) and the Dunn-Westbay Direct (5.14b) have cemented its status as the hardest, highest free-climbing arena in the world. In the past 35-odd years, those two climbs, plus a host of other new lines from 5.11+ to 5.13, have not only intensified the allure of the Diamond, they’ve hinted at its promising future.

Bruce nears my stance, inspecting the gear for his own redpoint attempt. For now, he’s supporting me; his turn will come.Bruce Miller, a carpenter by trade in Boulder, is as badass as he is understated. Choose any random pitch—rock, ice, choss, snow-covered, runout—and he’ll get the rope up. His résumé includes world-class alpine routes, remote A4 big walls, global FAs, and a healthy dose of 5.13s. Best of all, he’s kindhearted, humble, and easygoing. Since 2003, when we first climbed together in Vedauwoo, Wyoming, we’ve had loads of fun, much in the mountains. This is our second new Diamond route, our first being Hearts and Arrows, a nine-pitch 5.12b we put up in 2010.

I exhale forcefully, passing the hand warmer back and forth in my chalk bag. I unclip from the belay and remind myself to be deliberate: no hesitation. Because it’s in those brief moments of indecision when the doubts appear, like a distant flash of lightning. 

Almost exactly one year earlier, in August 2019, I stood at a small belay stance two pitches higher while Bruce rehearsed the crux pitch below on solo-toprope. Inky clouds and dark-gray streaks linking clouds to valleys hovered well to the north, so I didn’t worry: Only a 10 percent chance of storms was forecasted. But soon, a white flash blinded me, accompanied by a long, loud rumble. On Longs, clouds build up toward the west, invisible from the Diamond. In minutes, the cobalt sky can mutate into a swirling gray-black mass that can soak the wall with alarming ferocity—first with a violent battery of rain, hail, and snow, then by lighting it on fire. In July 2000, Andy Haberkorn was high on the Casual Route when lightning struck him in the chest and killed him. Being caught on the wall in an electrical storm is serious … and frightfully common. 

Suddenly, heavy snow began to fall. Bruce and I yelled back and forth, we had to move, but which way—up or down? 

Flash-KABOOM!!!

If down, we’d be sitting ducks at the end of our fixed lines, several hundred feet above Broadway, the big ledge dividing the Diamond from the Lower East Face. Or we could jumar to the top. But to jug fixed lines to a Fourteener’s exposed summit area during a storm … could anything be more foolish? It struck me that this might be the most important decision I would ever make. 

“I’m going up!” I yelled to Bruce, jugging frantically. Heaving chest, cramping arms—I felt like I was on a speeding Treadwall with landmines for crashpads. 

KABOOM!!! 

Lightning struck the wall, then the Boulderfield, then the summit, illuminating the storm from within. Snow flew sideways, freezing my face. Pull-up after pull-up, faster and faster, heart might explode. I collapsed on a ledge 20 feet below the top, gasping, drenched from sweat and snow. Huddled against the cold stone, too afraid to move, I waited for Bruce as icy hail piled up around me.

Today, however, the weather is stable. Ten feet above the belay, I reach a niche in a roof and shake out, trying to rewarm my fingers. I go through the moves I’ve memorized, and what feels like seconds later I’m poised like a spring, zeroed in on Table Ledge. I uncoil and latch the edge, then maneuver a final, tricky stand-up. I’ve sent the hardest pitch.

Partway up the penultimate “Roof Pitch,” a wide stem offers a moment’s reprieve. I glance down more than 1,300 uninterrupted feet to the talus, yet I am calm. When Bruce and I first tried the roof in 2017 and 2018 we were gripped, even on toprope. With inadequate directionals, just getting on to try the moves would often result in terrifying swings into space. Ultimately, this 5.12-ish sequence demanded a tremendous amount of time and energy to decipher, relative to its difficulty. 

I engage the roof with intensity. “Chris! You’re a boss!” I hear from afar as I pull the lip. It’s my friends Phil Gruber and Josh Wharton yelling from the left side of the wall. Higher, I tiptoe on micro-edges and non-holds, and then lurch for a sloping edge. A few more shaky moves and I highstep the belay ledge, gasping.

On the last ropelength, my body sags, heavy with fatigue, stress, and desire, just as my fingertips catch a toothy matchstick. My technique turns sloppy even as hope surges within. Finally, I pop my head over into the blinding sunshine. Four years and 51 days of effort have culminated in this moment; I feel it intensely. Soon, Bruce appears. I grab him, hug him hard, and thank him. 

“It’s your turn now, brother,” I say.

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